Dipper and Mabel learn of a secret rock-shaped talisman that grants 13 wishes. But when the whole town learns of its existence, it becomes a mad race to claim it first, as the twins try to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

It had to come eventually! This is my first fanfic in the "Gravity Falls" universe! This was a long time coming, and this was originally one of the three pilots I had planned to put out last fall. After a lot of debate, I decided to go ahead to approve this for a full series before you guys even saw the pilot! Hooray!

This is a good time to put this out, since we're still in the midst of the show's unexpected hiatus (although we now know that's less than a month from ending as of this writing), and the good thing is, a lot of characters from the show will appear in this.

We've got to start with the mains, minus Wendy though (she comes in later on in the story), but these are going to be five- to six-page chapters. You can only put so much material in that short of a space.

Onward Aoshima! Oh, and everyone else!

Disclaimer: The characters of 'Gravity Falls' belong to Disney.

"TURN IT ON!" yelled Mabel. "TURN IT ON, TURN IT ON!"

Mabel was jumping up and down on a patch of grass off to the side of the Mystery Shack parking lot, in front of a sprinkler. Dipper watched his twin sister scream and shout at Soos, who was standing next to the outdoor water faucet connected to the building. A 20-foot green hose connected the faucet to the sprinkler.

"You heard her, Soos!" shouted Dipper.

Soos saluted at them, acknowledging their request.

"Got it, little dudes!"

With that, he turned the water on. A few seconds later, liquid started flowing out of the sprinkler, in the form of five tandem nozzles which swayed left, right, and side-to-side. The two 12-year olds rejoiced in glee as their clothes became gradually doused in water. It was their best chance at some relief on a hot summer day.

Alas, it was not to be.

"What the marbles?" queried Grunkle Stan, as he came out the front door of his shop. "Does water LOOK like it's made of money?"

"Is that a trick question?" shouted Dipper.

"No. No, it's not."

He snapped his fingers at Soos. Soos immediately turned the water off, to the dismay of the Pines twins.

"Awww..." they mumbled.

"Now, stop wasting my money and make me some water! No, I mean, make waste of my money and stop making water? Oh, you darn know what I mean!"

With that, Grunkle Stan stomped back inside. Soos hustled back in after him.

"So much for cooling down. C'mon, Mabel..."

Dipper started to head for the front door. But then he stopped when he did not hear his sister following behind him.

"Mabel? AAAAAHHHHHH!"

He screamed in shock upon seeing that the water had caused Mabel's sweater to shrink while she was still wearing it. It was cutting off the circulation to her arms and was making her sweat uncomfortably.

And despite that...

"Dipper, look! I'm a sardine! Blubbity blub blub!"

...she did not seem fazed by it.

-Chapter One - Wish upon a Skull (01.21.03)-

15 minutes later, in the twins' bedroom in the attic...

The sweater Mabel had worn outside had a depiction of a desert on the front of it. In that desert was a partially-dehydrated cat crawling on the sand. And underneath the feline, in block letters, were the words 'SO' and 'HOT!,' with the former in sky blue and the latter in watermelon red.

But now it was only half the sweater it used to be, as made apparent by the fact that Mabel had thrown it onto her bed in two pieces: the front half and the back half.

"You're in a better place now, Mr. Kitty!" Mabel said.

Mabel then spun around to show off the new sweater she had put on: a lime green one with Santa Claus' face on it, along with the words 'He's watching you!' Naturally, Dipper had an objection.

"You do realize it's not December, right?"

To which Mabel replied, "You do realize it's almost July, right?"

Dipper thought about it for a second, and then nodded in understanding.

"Got me on that one. But, seriously, Grunkle Stan needs us in the shop. As in yesterday!"

He started heading for the ladder. Again, though, he stopped when he realized his sister was not following him.

"Mabel, there isn't any water in here!"

"It's not that," Mabel said in response. "It's just... it's so hot! Why do we have to work when it's so hot? There should be like a law or something that prevents us from working when it's so hot! Maybe the weatherman can tell us why it's so hot!"

"I sorta agree with you, but it's not like there's any sort of way to wish for it to not be so hot. Unless..."

Dipper gasped, coming to a realization.

"...maybe there's something in the book!"

"Really? 'Cause I was gonna say there might be something in the bo- oh, that is what you said."

Dipper pulled the mysterious book labeled only by its volume number, 3, out from underneath his pillow. He sat down on his bed and he started to flip through it. Mabel stood in front of him, staring downwards at the book.

"EUREKA!" Dipper shouted, stopping upon finding a page of interest.

Mabel took a seat alongside her brother and read along as Dipper read aloud.

"'Skull-13. A mysterious artifact that grants 13 wishes. Or so it claims. It turns out that I was only able to make one wish, and then it refused to grant any more. Although it was now useless to me, I buried it somewhere in the woods of Gravity Falls, since I was aware that, in the wrong hands, Skull-13 could bring about the end of the world! The fact that there are no limitations to a person's wish aside from only being able to make one should not sway you to attempt to find it! But if you must, only hold on to it long enough to make your wish and then destroy it!'"

The siblings looked up, each wondering if the warning would deter them from attempting to find it.

"I dunno," Mabel spoke up. "Maybe this is one mystery we should skip out on."

"But Mabel," argued Dipper, in a calming tone, "who knows how long this summer heat wave will last? Or summer, period! I know it sounds crazy, but if we have a chance to cool things down a bit, we should take it!"

"Wait a second! The book says it only gives one wish a person! We're two persons! We get two wishes! That means one of us can wish for it to be cooler, and the other can use the other wish for whatever they want!"

"You're right! But how do we decide who makes which wish?"

Mabel put a hand on her younger brother's shoulder.

"I think we both know what you're gonna wish for. Tee hee!"

"What? You think I'd actually use some mystical mumbo jumbo to wish for Wendy to fall madly in love with me? That's crazy and immoral and you know it!"

"Yes. You've been writing the word 'desperate' in the book over and over again!"

Dipper looked down. Sure enough, he had been doing exactly that for the last couple of minutes.

"I don't even remember getting up to look for a pen!"

"The sooner you admit it, the sooner we can start looking for this magical doohickey!"

"Even if I DID admit it, we don't even know where to begin looking! This book doesn't even give any clues and it's on the next page."

Sure enough, in plain sight on the very next page, was a crudely-drawn map of Gravity Falls. Well, mostly of the woods around the Mystery Shack, anyway. In addition, there were shorthand notes in the bottom left-hand corner of the page.

"And these must be coded directions of some kind," Dipper quickly deduced. "I guess we should start looking. Ready, Mabel?"

He turned towards his sister, who unsurprisingly already had two hard hats, a shovel, and a pickaxe all cradled in her arms.

"I was ready yesterday!"

The map had already given them a starting point. Using his brains, Dipper had decoded the directions on the way, so the twins were all set by the time they arrived.

"This should be easy!" Mabel exclaimed. "Where to first?"

Dipper opened his book and turned to the page with the map, along with his decoding scribbles.

"We start by going 75 paces west. Now, moss is known to grow on the north side of trees, so we should go..."

He never finished, as Mabel had already chosen a direction for herself.

"Heh heh heh."

Thankfully, it was actually the direction they were supposed to go, but still...

"Mabel, wait for me!" Dipper shouted, chasing after her.

The Pines twins made their way over hill and dale, through a rock tunnel, over a fallen tree, across an ankle-deep stream, up one side of a mountain, inside a log cabin at the mountain's peak to take a rest, down the other side of the mountain, and finally through a thicket of untrimmed bushes to arrive at...

"97, 98, 99, and... 100!"

Dipper stopped counting, having followed the last command on the page.

"That should be it! X marks the spot!"

"Hate to break it to ya, Dip, but all I see is an O."

"What do you mean?"

He took a step forward, and almost went tumbling into a hole. If not Mabel's quick reaction in grabbing his arm, he would have fallen in.

"Oh! Thanks, Mabel!"

Dipper squatted down in front of the hole. He pinched his fingers into the dirt and grinded it between them.

"Hmmm... hasn't hardened yet, so this must've been dug very recently. But the question is who, and how did they know about Skull-13?"

He then felt Mabel tug at his vest.

"Uh, Dipper?"

"Not now, Mabel."

She tugged at it again.

"Dipper?"

"Mabel, please! I'm trying to think!"

She tugged a third time.

"DIPPER!"

"WHAT?"

She pointed ahead of them. Dipper looked up, and was stunned silent.

The hole was 300 feet away from the Mystery Shack.

Grunkle Stan was laughing maniacally as he sat behind the counter at the cash register.

"If I didn't know any better, I swear I came up with the idea myself! Kids want to cool down in the summer, so why not build an outdoor swimming pool! I can charge them by the hou- no, wait, by the HALF-hour! I'll make twice the money in half the time!"

Soos suddenly walked in from the back, half-covered in dirt. He had something in hand that he wanted to show his boss. So he put it down on the counter.

"What is this, Soos? A rock? I got plenty of them in here already! I don't need one more."

"But it's not a rock!" argued Soos. "It's a..."

Grunkle Stan refused to let him finish, as he picked up the small rock and threw it back at Soos. He caught it with ease.

"I'm paying you to dig a hole, not give me useless junk! Now go!"

"Yes, Mr. Pines!"

Soos picked up the rock and headed out the way he came.

"But I'm pretty sure this isn't a rock," he said to himself.

From far away, it definitely looked like a rock. But Soos swore that every time he pulled it to within six inches of his eyes, it looked more like a small skull covered in dirt.

A skull, that upon blowing the dirt off of it, revealed that it had the number 13 engraved into the back.

"Cool!"

He put it into his pocket, not noticing the eyes come to life for a brief second, glowing a dark red, before going out.

To be continued...

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